In the past I have seen a map that shows all the activity on the map within a month. Can anyone post said map. I would just like to make a point that the only action in naval action is happening in the safe zones and it has been that way for some time. The reality is that capitals are to important and offer to much content to be the "safe zone" for newbs. safe zones need serious restrictions on content in order to force the players to venture out into HUGE map that we have. For example imagine that DAYZ had made the northwest air base a player safe zone where no pvp happened and you couldn't get ganked.all the loot spawned right there so that would make the whole rest of the map effectively useless.... that is what has currently happened in NA. especially during the usa timezones. I would bet that over 65% of all the combat in NA happened inside safe zones. in the last month.

So Safe zones. We're in a bit of a pickle between the wolves of the game wanting the ability to hunt outside capitals and then on the flip side the game does need to offer some basic protections so newer players can start to turn into veteran players. Without safe zones, the population drops. In a perfect world this game would have 2000 players and capitals would be protected mainly by other captains of that nation. Also in that perfect world with 2000 players capitals would be far too busy to hunt and most ports on the map would be populated enough to be able to hunt them with frequency. But we're not in that 2000 player paradise and we're barely cracking 400-450 during a busy EU prime time and for some reason we still have 11 nations to dilute our base... anyway..
Introducing:
The Pax Christendom Solution to all our Reinforcement Zone Issues
Step 1
Introduce 2 zones around a nation's capital and it's protected ports.
Note - obviously not to scale, just emphasized for this post. Rings would need to be smaller
Red Zone - Capital Area. Zero PVP. Players cannot tag other players at all. Players can still tag AI and more importantly, lower level missions spawn in this zone. Let's say up until master & commander. Loot potential in this zone is greatly diminished. Similar to how crappy the loot is in hostility missions. Only the "basic" stuff drops for newer players.
Blue Zone - Reinforcement Area. Players can tag and be tagged. Mid level missions spawn here. Something like Master & Commander - Captain. AI can also be tagged for a slightly higher increase in loot potential. Missions and AI battles close after a certain time period. Players that are tagged automatically call for PLAYER reinforcements. Player vs Player battles stay open for 30mins. If there is a way to increase the starting distance automatically I think that would also be a good idea. This way, despite a good tag there is still some hope for the player and give others an option to join. Another thought would be to immediately call for reinforcements, but delay the battle start 60 seconds.
Step 2
Introduce a new feature called hot zones. When a player is tagged and hits the reinforcement button in the reinforcement zone (blue) a message from clerk goes out into nation chat "A Semaphore Tower has Signaled that a British Ship is in Distress and Needs Assistance". Then a red circle/zone/spot will appear on the map in the general location as to where it is.
Something like this.
Step 3
Protections against jumping missions. Let's be honest here, popping into missions and/or AI battles is highly weighted towards the attacker. It also ruins the gameplay for new players. While making battles inside the blue zone close after the standard amount of time will help, people will still get jumped. Any hostile players that join a mission or AI battle should automatically spawn AI reinforcements for the defender AND create a hot zone on the map.
aka - preventing ganks and creating more "honest" pvp. People hate ganks, mission jumping is ganking. Most folks don't mind losing in honest fights.
Step 4
Create 2 types of missions.
Low risk - spawns in the blue zones. Decreased loot chances, mission XP and gold payout. Battles close after 3mins
High Risk - spawns outside of any protection zones. Increased loot chances, mission XP and gold payout. Battles close after 30mins
Players can pick their poison.
Step 5
Getting players outside of the safe zones.
- as above, increased payout and loot potential for missions and AI fleets
- crafting inside player owned ports has an increased chance of creating gold/purple ships (safe zones/capitals should have a 0% chance)
- increased PVP payout. Introduce a pvp mark "bonus" called "Open World PVP Bonus". Maybe an additional mark per person based on the ship class.
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Thoughts and feedback would be appreciated. This actually took a little time to put together so @admin better read it or I'm gonna go weep in the shower and re-evaluate my life.